Tackle the issue of adjournments, case pendency Premium

The culture of judicial adjournments should go and is one that needs to be addressed at the earliest with a viable solution

The President of India, Droupadi Murmu, recently said that the culture of judicial adjournments should go. She highlighted this while speaking at the valedictory session of the two-day National Conference of District Judiciary, organised by the Supreme Court of India, in New Delhi in September. She further said that the poor and the rural population suffer injustice silently rather than going to the courts out of a fear of the delay in getting the cases resolved.

The concern raised by the President is genuine. And it needs to be addressed at the earliest with a viable solution.

Under British rule and after Independence, civil courts dealt with all kinds of civil issues by following the Code of Civil Procedure. Another is criminal courts to deal with criminal cases under the Criminal Procedure Code. Besides them, the Supreme Court and High Courts deal with constitutional cases by issuing writs under the Constitution and Appellate powers. These courts are still functioning.

With an aim to reduce the burden of pendency on civil courts, the tribunal system was introduced through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 to deal with specialised subjects. Likewise, special laws were enacted with specialised forums or courts. Most of these statutes prescribe a time-line for adjudication of the cases. Sometimes, to end the public outcry — as it happened during the distressing case of a rape and murder of a woman doctor in Kolkata — provision is made to decide a case in a fixed and time-bound manner. But hardly any of the cases meet the time-line fixed by the statute. The major reasons include the judge-population ratio. As in 2024, in the Law Minister’s reply in the Lok Sabha, there are 21 judges per million population against the recommendations of the 120th report of the Law Commission of India of having 50 judges per million population. The second is because of not filling vacant posts of judges in a time-bound manner. The third is about giving one judge the additional charge of two or more courts, even in the so-called specialised courts that are created in haste in order to control public outcry. The fourth is in enacting pieces of legislation without prior judicial-impact assessment, and the fifth is the inordinate delay in bringing witnesses to courts.

On the issue of pendency in High Courts, against the sanctioned strength of 1,114 judges (as on December 31, 2023), which itself is much less when compared to the population and number of cases being filed, the present strength of judges is 770 (as on October 30, 2024), or 30% of vacancies. Besides dealing with writ matters, as prescribed by the Constitution, almost every piece of legislation confers appeal, revision, transfer, quash, bail, contempt and other miscellaneous powers upon High Courts. In 2021, six specialised tribunals were abolished and their functions conferred on High Courts. Thus, all this is resulting in a huge backlog of cases in High Courts. On an average, it takes between six to seven years for a case to be decided in a High Court.

So far as the Supreme Court is concerned, though it is functioning with almost a full sanctioned strength of 34 judges, there are nearly two dozen statutes which provide for direct appeal to the Supreme Court, besides it exercising writ and appeal powers. Almost every decision, mostly against orders of the High Courts in north India, is challenged before the Supreme Court, under Article 136, resulting in huge case pendency.

All judges, right from the district judiciary to the Supreme Court, are working overtime to meet the huge pendency demand. For example, a magistrate in a criminal court has to do regular call work, take cognisance of fresh cases, conduct a trial, pass judgments, deal with arrests (remand), private complaints, bails, also record dying declarations, and carry out other miscellaneous works. If he is given additional charge of another court, there is the work of that court to be done as well. Thus, dealing with so much varied work and with almost 100 cases in a day may cause great mental stress to the judge. Thus he may not be able to concentrate while writing judgments, which will lead to errors. This could be a reason for further challenge and delay.